WASHINGTON – Resurgent Democrats swept toward control of the House and gained ground in the Senate on Tuesday in elections shaped by an unpopular war in Iraq and scandal at home.

“Mr. President, we need a new direction in Iraq,” said California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, in line to become the first woman speaker in history.

Aided by public dissatisfaction with President Bush, Democrats won gubernatorial races in New York, Ohio and Massachusetts for the first time in more than a decade, then put Colorado, Maryland and Arkansas in their column as well.

Bush monitored the returns from the White House as the voters picked a new Congress certain to complicate his final two years in office. He arranged to call Pelosi this morning, then hold a news conference.

“They have not gone the way he would have liked,” press secretary Tony Snow said of the election returns.

Charlie Crist was a rare bright spot for Republicans, winning the Florida governorship now held by the president’s brother Jeb, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won a new term in California, the nation’s most populous state.

But that was cold comfort for the Republicans, who have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for most of the time since Bush took office and used their majority to pass large tax cuts and back the war in Iraq.

By midnight in the East, Democrats had picked up more than 20 House seats now in Republican hands, in all regions of the country. They needed 15 to end a long turn in the minority, and a final result would depend on dozens of races yet uncalled.

If the outcome of the House battle seemed preordained, not so the struggle for Senate control.

Democrats won Republican Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Ohio but came up short in Tennessee as Republican Bob Corker won a hotly contested race, defeating Rep. Harold Ford. Jr., in a vote count that went past midnight.

That left three races – Virginia, Missouri and Montana – uncalled, and Democrats needed to win all of them to complete their sweep of Congress.

Indiana was particularly cruel to House Republicans. Reps. John Hostettler, Chris Chocola and Mike Sodrel all lost in a state where Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels’ unpopularity compounded the dissatisfaction with Bush.

Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson lost in her bid for a 13th term in Connecticut; Anne Northup fell in Kentucky after 10 years in the House; and Rep. Charles Taylor was defeated in North Carolina.

Scandal took its undeniable toll on the Republicans. Democrat Zack Space won the race to succeed Bob Ney, who pleaded guilty to corruption this fall in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Republican Rep. John Sweeney lost his seat in New York several days after reports that he had roughed up his wife – an allegation she denied. Republicans also lost the seat that Rep. Mark Foley had held. He resigned on Sept. 29 after being confronted with sexually explicit computer messages he had written to teenage pages.

Rep. Don Sherwood lost despite apologizing to the voters for a long-term affair with a much younger woman; and Rep. Curt Weldon, also from Pennsylvania, was denied a new term after he became embroiled in a corruption investigation.

Surveys of voters suggested Democrats were winning the support of independents with almost 60 percent support, and middle-class voters were leaving Republicans behind.

About six in 10 voters said they disapproved of the way Bush is handling his job, that the nation is on the wrong track and that they oppose the war in Iraq. Voters in all groups were more inclined to vote for Democratic candidates than for Republicans.

More than half of the voters registered dissatisfaction with the way Republican leaders in Congress dealt with Foley. They voted overwhelming Democratic in House races, by a margin of 3-1.

The surveys were taken by The Associated Press and the television networks.

South Dakota voters rejected the toughest abortion law in the land – a measure that would have outlawed the procedure under almost any circumstances.

In a comeback unlike any other, Sen. Joe Lieberman won a new term in Connecticut – dispatching Democrat Ned Lamont and thus winning when it counted most against the man who had prevailed in a summertime primary. Lieberman, a supporter of Bush’s war policy, ran as an independent, but will side with the Democrats when he returns to Washington.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton coasted to a second Democratic term in New York, winning roughly 70 percent of the vote in a warm-up to a possible run for the White House in 2008.

Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania became the first Republican senator to fall to the Democrats, losing his seat after two conservative terms to Bob Casey Jr., the state treasurer.

Among the GOP losers, Hostettler, Santorum and DeWine all won their seats in the Republican landslide of 1994 – the year the GOP grabbed control of the House and Senate from the Democrats and launched a Republican revolution.

“It’s very hard to watch,” lamented Dick Armey, who was House majority leader in those heady GOP days.